Now that City are back in the premiership and the Chameleons have reformed, Manchester is once again complete. Back in the early 80s, the band troubled the brickwork in venues across the country with their emotionally fraught pre-stadium rock that was years before its time. Guitarists Dave Fielding and Reg Smithies manufactured expansive choral riffs, while drummer John Lever hammered the tom-tom and snare as if trying to knock his drum-kit into a more interesting shape.
With singer-bassist Mark Burgess adding resonant vocal pleas and strong basslines, the Chameleons made a defiant noise amid the doleful clatter of Manchester's declining heavy industry. In the dandified 80s, some blamed the band's eventual demise on a lack of image. They were just four ordinary-looking blokes in drain-pipe jeans and tatty denim jackets.
Opening with Swamp Thing from their ill-fated final album, Strange Times, it was immediately clear that their awesome live display of power and delicacy hadn't been tempered by a 14-year absence. Rivalling Johnny Marr's What Difference Does it Make? for the best guitar intro of the 80s, the picked strings were soon accompanied by a coccyx-trembling bass and drums, while Burgess delivered every word as if his life still depended on it. These were songs to remind you of the hairs on the back of your neck.
With John Lever now attacking the drums as if he was smashing up a lathe, A Person Isn't Safe Anywhere These Days had enough menace to convince you of the title's veracity. And the song's intensity alone had a small gaggle of goths reaching to touch up their face-powder. Yet the Chameleons are too versatile to simply bludgeon their way through, and here they moved towards a haunting, rhapsodic conclusion.
Their irreproachable two-hour set was all about this nerve and bone combination of elegy and anarchy. While epics of despair, Soul in Isolation and Caution, wound themselves ever tighter in pursuit of their death rattle finales, the band's debut single, In Shreds, had an unstoppable belligerence. Second Skin and Don't Fall further enticed the sold-out crowd toward riot status.
Sometimes nostalgia can be well worth the wait.
